expiration of six years; and by a convict for life, at the expiration of eight years. The Governor was empowered, moreover, to grant both conditional and absolute pardons whenever he deemed it expedient to do so; either of which, as well as a certificate of freedom, implying that the period for which the individual had been transported had expired, was supposed to restore him to all the rights and privileges of a free subject in the colony. That such a system of management was well calculated to promote the grand object of Government, in the establishment of the colony of New South Wales-I mean the reformation of its convict-population-the reader will doubtless acknowledge; and that it actually had such an effect in many instances I am happy to bear testimony. It is only to be regretted that a counteracting influence, arising both from the measures of Government and the general procedure of its officers, was too often and too successfully exerted in the modes I have already particularized; and that the private interests and the passions of individuals, from whom better things might have been expected, were supposed to be linked with the perpetuation and extension of the vice of the colony, rather than with its gradual advancement in the practice of virtue.

Till the year 1821, when the current of free emigration began to set in strongly for the colony, the number of free persons in the territory was comparatively small, and the great majority of the convictpopulation had consequently to be employed variously in the service of Government. I have already had occasion to show that this was decidedly a most unfortu

nate state of things for the colony; and that the health and vigour of its body politic would have been promoted in a great variety of ways, had the system so early and so strongly recommended by Governor Phillip been duly followed up, or, in other words, had there been a much earlier influx and a much greater amount of free emigration.

The talent for managing masses of men is unquestionably one of the rarest gifts of the Creator, and the case is surely by no means altered, nor the difficulties it implies in any way diminished, when the persons to be so managed are in a state of thorough depravity. In short, it was a matter of absolute necessity that the government of the colony, being thus deprived of the stay and support of a numerous free population, should have been entrusted, in the earlier stages of its existence, to men who really possessed this talent and who were known to do so; for the command of the troops that were required to protect the settlement was a matter of very inferior consideration. Great mistakes, however, were committed in this respect; and the management of the convict-population of the colony was entrusted, in many instances, to men who had neither the wisdom nor the virtue which a situation of so much real difficulty imperatively required. The consequences, as might well be anticipated, were unfavourable in the highest degree to the morals of the settlement.

I have already particularized the modes in which the numerous convicts in the service of Government, up to the close of Governor Macquarie's administration, were distributed. A large proportion of them were

employed in the various processes connected with the Government buildings and the other public works in progress throughout the colony. The remainder were employed chiefly on the Government or experiment-farms. The erection of such buildings, I mean for the most part, and the establishment of such farms, were temptations into which the Government of the colony naturally fell, from the superabundance of convictlabour of which it always possessed the unlimited command and the absolute disposal-and from the want of a free emigrant agricultural population, to enable it to disperse the convicts all over the territory, and to employ them in much greater number in the labours of the field.

This superabundance of convict-labour led, during the earlier part of the administration of Sir Thomas Brisbane, to an arrangement which was highly beneficial to a number of respectable settlers in certain parts of the colony, but of which the continued influx of free settlers prevented the extension to other districts, in which it would doubtless have been equally beneficial, and soon led to its entire discontinuance. The arrangement I allude to consisted in the institution of clearinggangs, or parties of convicts in the service of Government--each under the charge of an overseer-who were stationed for certain periods on the lands of private individuals to fell and to burn off the standing timber. This was done at so much per acre, the proprietor who obtained the indulgence engaging to pay the ' Government in wheat-the produce of the land so cleared by Government-labour.

This arrangement, which I believe was introduced at the suggestion of Major Goulburn, then ColonialSecretary of New South Wales, was exceedingly well devised; for, while it provided suitable employment for the convicts in Government-service, and insured the enforcement of a uniform and salutary discipline, it was of singular benefit to the free settler, in enabling him to cultivate a much greater extent of land than he could otherwise have done. The clearing-gangs were all numbered, and were under the charge of a general superintendent, who could ride about to the different farms on which they were respectively stationed, and inspect them occasionally; while the overseer of each was responsible for the due performance of the allotted quantum of task-work. Had a system of free emigration been encouraged and promoted, as it ought to have been from the first settlement of the colony, and had the Government assisted the free settlers by some such arrangement as this, the following good effects would have resulted to the colonial community; a large extent of land would have been brought into cultivation, and the Government would have been saved the necessity of importing wheat from foreign settlements at a prodigious expense; a large proportion of the convict-population would have undergone a species of training in the service of Government, that would afterwards have rendered them useful servants to the free settlers, and disposed and fitted them for the peaceful pursuits of agriculture on the attainment of their freedom; while those useless and expensive conservatories of vice and villany-the Government-farms

and penal settlements of the colony-that grew up under a different and impolitic system, would never have existed; and the towns of the colony would have been assemblages of industrious citizens instead of grand nurseries of dissipation. Nay, if the colonial government had even employed a portion of the superabundant convict-labour of the colony in clearing small farms for emancipated convicts of good character, and retained possession of such farms till the expense of clearing them had been paid for from the produce of the soil, it would assuredly have been consulting the best interests of the colony, and promoting in a high degree the gradual reformation of its convict-population. In short, it was so much the interest and the duty of the colonial government to disperse the convicts over the territory, and to employ them as much as possible in the labours of the field, that, if a concentration of the convict-population had even been the result of circumstances unconnected with the measures of Government, the Government ought to have interposed in every possible way to effect their dispersion. In the ages immediately after the Deluge, when the principle of concentration was adopted by a large proportion of the human race, whose ambitious leader said, "Go to, let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth;" the principle of dispersion was enforced, we are told, by Divine interposition. For "the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men builded; and the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they